Windows Vpn Server Role in DMZ?Finally had a chance to implement this. Worked like a charm! Just opened ports 1723 (PPTP), 500/4500 (IPSec), and 443 (SSTP) on the firewall and forwarded them to the server running RRAS, and everything's up and running. It's pretty popular already.

May26

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Windows Vpn Server Role in DMZ?Ah, ok. So the VPN server role isn't dead-set on bridging a WAN and a LAN interface in its design? I'd be thrilled if this is the case; I just want to make sure it's possible before I invest too much time into it.

May6

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Anonymous access to SMB share hosted on Server 2008 R2 EnterpriseAs I understand it, the Everyone group does not apply to this scenario since the meaning of Everyone is "any authenticated user" i.e. Everyone explicitly excludes ANONYMOUS LOGON by default. Even still, just to be safe I did enable the "Let Everyone permissions apply to anonymous users" setting.

How do I administrate the storage used by Windows Server Backup?It's funny you mention DPM: I've heard of this product before, and actually have it on my short list of things I want to research. The deployment is already configured with System Center Essentials 2010, but after some googling it doesn't seem as if there's much information as to whether DPM can be configured in an SCE environment. Do you have any experience in this area?

Wake on Lan for Dell Poweredge 2950?Well, this is embarrassing. I looked in the BIOS before writing this question and didn't find anything, however the documentation I linked above seems to suggest that it isn't necessary under Server 2000 and 2003 (and assumedly 2008). Furthermore, when I had looked in the NIC's own configuration during boot, I had assumed "Pre-boot Wake on Lan" was referring to PXE since the "boot configuration" setting was set to "Pre-Boot Configuration Environment." I took a leap of faith and enabled that setting, and it works now. Thanks!

Fault tolerant server structure for the smallest of businessesHaha. Yeah, I know what you mean; I've actually suggested that they get a "DR" desktop just to sit around unplugged in case all the workstations should be unavailable at once. The case for the server was just that if all the business data were in one place (also they're interested in/curious about sharepoint) then they'd still be operational in the case that one of these myriad hardware problems occur. I like the ebay idea though for cost recooping; I'll bring that to them.

Aug17

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Fault tolerant server structure for the smallest of businessesI agree 100% with support for Dell--I'm actively trying to steer in this direction, however at this point they've got two ailing systems assembled in the last half year, both of which were very expensive; somewhat contrary to the previously given outlook, they don't want to just deep-six these custom builds in order to pick up a bunch of new optiplexes. Touchy situation, to be sure.

Aug17

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Fault tolerant server structure for the smallest of businessesYour curmudgeoning is well-received; I know where you're coming from, but from the owner's perspective every day they lose due to machine downtime could pay for an entire machine. It's by no means mission-critical or anything, but they've got a lot of clients and a lot of simultaneously running projects, so the delays make them look bad to all of them simultaneously. The rationale is pretty much just as you describe it--"we've got the money to throw at it; just make the problems go away."

Fault tolerant server structure for the smallest of businessesYeah, I agree. These failure rates seem impossible to me. And yeah; I meant that I was thinking of running a virtualized SBS in hyper-v, but I'm not sure what the underlying infrastructure for that would cost; mostly because I'm not entirely sure what would be required of the underlying infrastructure itself, heh.

Aug17

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Fault tolerant server structure for the smallest of businessesTo be clear, I was more interested in the SCOM/SCVMM aspects of SCE more than I was SCCM. Given my limited knowledge of WSUS and SCCM both, I'm under the impression that SCCM is a beefed up wrapper/replacement for WSUS, right? It's mainly the health monitoring I'm after, and from what I was quoted by MS it would be about a $200 deployment--which didn't seem terribly overkill.